Though Pasimêlus and his friends were masters of the citadel, and had repulsed the assault of their enemies, yet the coup d’état had been completely successful in overawing their party in the city, and depriving them of all means of communicating with the Lacedæmonians at Sikyon. Feeling unable to maintain themselves, they were besides frightened by menacing omens, when they came to offer sacrifice, in order that they might learn whether the gods encouraged them to fight or not. The victims were found so alarming, as to drive them to evacuate the post and prepare for voluntary exile. Many of them (according to Diodorus five hundred)[632] actually went into exile; while others, and among them Pasimêlus himself, were restrained by the entreaties of their friends and relatives, combined with solemn assurances of peace and security from the government; who now, probably, felt themselves victorious, and were anxious to mitigate the antipathies which their recent violence had inspired. These pacific assurances were faithfully kept, and no farther mischief was done to any citizen.
But the political condition of Corinth was materially altered, by an extreme intimacy of alliance and communion now formed with Argos; perhaps combined with reciprocal rights of intermarriage, and of purchase and sale. The boundary pillars or hedges which separated the two territories, were pulled up, and the city was entitled Argos instead of Corinth (says Xenophon); such was probably the invidious phrase in which the opposition party described the very close political union now formed between the two cities; upheld by a strong Argeian force in the city and acropolis, together with some Athenian mercenaries under Iphikrates, and some Bœotians as a garrison in the port of Lechæum. Most probably the government remained still Corinthian, and still oligarchical, as before. But it now rested upon Argeian aid, and was therefore dependent chiefly upon Argos, though partly also upon the other two allies.
To Pasimêlus and his friends such a state of things was intolerable. Though personally they had no ill-usage to complain of, yet the complete predominance of their political enemies was quite sufficient to excite their most vehement antipathies. They entered into secret correspondence with Praxitas, the Lacedæmonian commander at Sikyon, engaging to betray to him one of the gates in the western Long Wall between Corinth and Lechæum. The scheme being concerted, Pasimêlus and his partisans got themselves placed,[633] partly by contrivance and partly by accident, on the night-watch at this gate; an imprudence, which shows that the government not only did not maltreat them, but even admitted them to trust. At the moment fixed, Praxitas,—presenting himself with a Lacedæmonian mora or regiment, a Sikyonian force, and the Corinthian exiles,—found the treacherous sentinels prepared to open the gates. Having first sent in a trusty soldier to satisfy him that there was no deceit,[634] he then conducted all his force within the gates, into the mid-space between the two Long Walls. So broad was this space, and so inadequate did his numbers appear to maintain it, that he took the precaution of digging a cross-ditch with a palisade to defend himself on the side towards the city; which he was enabled to do undisturbed, since the enemy (we are not told why) did not attack him all the next day. On the ensuing day, however, Argeians, Corinthians, and Athenian mercenaries under Iphikrates, all came down from the city in full force; the latter stood on the right of the line, along the eastern wall, opposed to the Corinthian exiles on the Lacedæmonian left; while the Lacedæmonians themselves were on their own right, opposed to the Corinthians from the city; and the Argeians, opposed to the Sikyonians, in the centre.
It was here that the battle began; the Argeians, bold from superior numbers, attacked and broke the Sikyonians, tearing up the palisade, and pursuing them down to the sea with much slaughter;[635] upon which Pasimachus the Lacedæmonian commander of cavalry, coming to their aid, caused his small body of horsemen to dismount and tie their horses to trees, and then armed them with shields taken from the Sikyonians, inscribed on the outside with the letter Sigma (Σ). With these he approached on foot to attack the Argeians, who, mistaking them for Sikyonians, rushed to the charge with alacrity; upon which Pasimachus exclaimed,—“By the two gods, Argeians, these Sigmas which you see here will deceive you;” he then closed with them resolutely, but his number was so inferior that he was soon overpowered and slain. Meanwhile, the Corinthian exiles on the left had driven back Iphikrates with his mercenaries (doubtless chiefly light troops) and pursued them even to the city gates; while the Lacedæmonians, easily repelling the Corinthians opposed to them, came out of their palisade, and planted themselves with their faces towards the eastern wall, but at a little distance from it, to intercept the Argeians on their return. The latter were forced to run back as they could, huddling close along the eastern wall, with their right or unshielded side exposed, as they passed, to the spears of the Lacedæmonians. Before they could get to the walls of Corinth, they were met and roughly handled by the victorious Corinthian exiles. And even when they came to the walls, those within, unwilling to throw open the gates for fear of admitting the enemy, contented themselves with handing down ladders, over which the defeated Argeians clambered with distress and difficulty. Altogether, their loss in this disastrous retreat was frightful. Their dead (says Xenophon) lay piled up like heaps of stones or wood.[636]
This victory of Praxitas and the Lacedæmonians, though it did not yet make them masters of Lechæum,[637] was, nevertheless, of considerable importance. Shortly afterwards they received reinforcements which enabled them to turn it to still better account. The first measure of Praxitas was to pull down a considerable breadth of the two walls, leaving a breach which opened a free passage for any Lacedæmonian army from Sikyon to reach and pass the isthmus. He then marched his troops through the breach, forward on the road to Megara, capturing the two Corinthian dependencies of Krommyon and Sidus on the Saronic gulf, in which he placed garrisons. Returning back by the road south of Corinth, he occupied Epieikia on the frontier of Epidaurus, as a protection to the territory of the latter against incursions from Corinth,—and then disbanded his army.
A desultory warfare was carried on during the ensuing winter and spring between the opposite garrisons in Corinth and Sikyon. It was now that the Athenian Iphikrates, in the former place, began to distinguish himself at the head of his mercenary peltasts whom, after their first organization by Konon, he had trained to effective tactics under the strictest discipline, and whose movements he conducted with consummate skill. His genius introduced improvements both in their armor and in their clothing. He lengthened by one half both the light javelin and the short sword, which the Thracian peltasts habitually carried; he devised a species of leggings, known afterwards by the name of Iphikratides; and he thus combined, better than had ever been done before, rapid motion,—power of acting in difficult ground and open order,—effective attack, either by missiles or hand to hand, and dexterous retreat in case of need.[638] As yet, he was but a young officer, in the beginning of his military career.[639] We must therefore presume that these improvements were chiefly of later date, the suggestions of his personal experience; but even now, the successes of his light troops were remarkable. Attacking Phlius, he entrapped the Phliasians into an ambuscade, and inflicted on them a defeat so destructive that they were obliged to invoke the aid of a Lacedæmonian garrison for the protection of their city. He gained a victory near Sikyon, and carried his incursions over all Arcadia, to the very gates of the cities; damaging the Arcadian hoplites so severely, that they became afraid to meet him in the field. His own peltasts, however, though full of confidence against these Peloponnesian hoplites, still retained their awe and their reluctance to fight against Lacedæmonians;[640] who, on their side, despised them, but despised their own allies still more. “Our friends fear these peltasts, as children fear hobgoblins,”—said the Lacedæmonians, sarcastically, endeavoring to set the example of courage by ostentatious demonstrations of their own around the walls of Corinth.[641]
The breach made in the Long Walls of Corinth by Praxitas had laid open the road for a Peloponnesian army to march either into Attica or Bœotia.[642] Fortunately for the Athenians, they had already completed the rebuilding of their own Long Walls; but they were so much alarmed by the new danger, that they marched with their full force, and with masons and carpenters accompanying,[643] to Corinth. Here, with that celerity of work for which they were distinguished,[644] they in a few days reëstablished completely the western wall; the more important of the two, since it formed the barrier against the incursions of the Lacedæmonians from Sikyon. They had then a secure position, and could finish the eastern wall at their leisure; which they accordingly did, and then retired, leaving it to the confederate troops in Corinth to defend.
This advantage, however,—a very material one,—was again overthrown by the expedition of the Lacedæmonian king, Agesilaus, during the same summer. At the head of a full Lacedæmonian and Peloponnesian force, he first marched into the territory of Argos, and there spent some time in ravaging all the cultivated plain. From hence he passed over the mountain-road, by Tenea,[645] into the plain of Corinth, to the foot of the newly-repaired Long Walls. Here his brother Teleutias, who had recently superseded Herippidas as admiral in the Corinthian Gulf, came to coöperate with him in a joint attack, by sea and land, on the new walls and on Lechæum.[646] The presence of this naval force rendered the Long Walls difficult to maintain, since troops could be disembarked in the interval between them, where the Sikyonians in the previous battle had been beaten and pursued down to the sea. Agesilaus and Teleutias were strong enough to defeat the joint force of the four confederated armies, and to master not only the Long Walls, but also the port of Lechæum,[647] with its docks, and the ships within them; thus breaking up the naval power of Corinth in the Krissæan Gulf. Lechæum now became a permanent post of hostility against Corinth, occupied by a Lacedæmonian garrison, and occasionally by the Corinthian exiles, while any second rebuilding of the Corinthian Long Walls by the Athenians became impossible. After this important success, Agesilaus returned to Sparta. Neither he nor his Lacedæmonian hoplites, especially the Amyklæans, were ever willingly absent from the festival of the Hyakinthia; nor did he now disdain to take his station in the chorus,[648] under the orders of the choric conductor, for the pæan in honor of Apollo.
It was thus that the Long Walls, though rebuilt by the Athenians in the preceding year, were again permanently overthrown, and the road for Lacedæmonian armies to march beyond the isthmus once more laid open. So much were the Athenians and the Bœotians alarmed at this new success, that both appear to have become desirous of peace, and to have sent envoys to Sparta. The Thebans are said to have offered to recognize Orchomenus (which was now occupied by a Lacedæmonian garrison) as autonomous and disconnected from the Bœotian federation; while the Athenian envoys seem to have been favorably received at Sparta, and to have found the Lacedæmonians disposed to make peace on better terms than those which had been proposed during the late discussions with Tiribazus (hereafter to be noticed;) recognizing the newly built Athenian walls, restoring Lemnos, Imbros, and Skyros to Athens, and guaranteeing autonomy to each separate city in the Grecian world. The Athenian envoys at Sparta having provisionally accepted these terms, forty days were allowed for reference to the people of Athens; to which place Lacedæmonian envoys were sent as formal bearers of the propositions. The Argeians and Corinthians, however, strenuously opposed the thoughts of peace, urging the Athenians to continue the war; besides which, it appears that many Athenian citizens thought that large restitution ought to have been made of Athenian property forfeited at the end of the late war, and that the Thracian Chersonese ought to have been given back as well as the three islands. On these and other grounds, the Athenian people refused to sanction the recommendation of their envoys; though Andokides, one of those envoys, in a discourse still extant, earnestly advised that they should accept the peace.[649]